


That Girl Loves Danger

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:24:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabe is a trans girl. She doesn't bother telling people very often, because they argue with her about it, and who has that kind of time?</p>
<p>Pete doesn't argue. She knew there was a reason she likes Pete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Girl Loves Danger

**Author's Note:**

> Written for queer_fest 2013. Prompt: Any fandom, any character, zie's tired of coming out as trans because then everyone thinks zie's too butch to be MtF or too femme to be FtM.
> 
> Title from "Living In The Sky With Diamonds," Cobra Starship.

Gabe stops coming out when she's nineteen, after she tells her band and her average for reactions that don't make her want to puke goes from one in three to two in six. Which is still the same, if she did the math, but feels a hell of a lot worse.

Her dad and and Rob on one side; her mom, her brother, Tyler, and Heath on the other, telling her to quit being a liar.

Not that Rob and Papi actually _get_ it, she knows. Rob just reacts to confusion by saying, "Okay," and Papi always thinks Gabe knows what she's talking about. He has faith in her, even when she's informing him that the son he'd raised is really a daughter.

After the disastrous band meeting, she goes home to Papi instead of to her own apartment. "You can start calling me a boy again if you want," she says, standing in the living-room doorway. "I was being stupid and just lying to get attention."

Papi mutes the game show he's watching and looks up at her. "I have never known you to lie for attention. When you want attention, you tell the truth very loudly."

Gabe shrugs and digs her fingernails into her palms, fighting not to let tears rise in her eyes. "Heath and Tyler disagree."

"But not Robert?" Gabe shrugs again and Papi nods. "I always have liked Robert best of the three of them."

"You can call me a boy again if you want," Gabe repeats.

"And if I do not want to?"

"That would be okay. I'm going to bed now."

"We will talk more in the morning, mija. Sleep well."

They don't talk about it in the morning, but that's okay, because Papi doesn't change. 

**

The problem is that Gabe knows she isn't a boy, but she also knows that she isn't very good at being a girl. She's read stuff, she's watched movies, she's done actual research in actual books in the Rutgers library; someone who's born a boy and knows she's a girl is supposed to feel trapped in the wrong body, supposed to want makeup and pretty dresses, supposed to want to be feminine like a princess and have boobs and get rid of her dick.

Gabe _likes_ her body. She likes her dick. She wants to wear makeup sometimes, but not all the time, she wouldn't mind boobs but she doesn't yearn for them, and she doesn't want to be a princess. She wants to be a riot grrl. Kathleen motherfucking Hanna.

She's not fitting any of the guidelines. All she's got going for her in terms of being a girl is that she _knows she's a girl_.

That's probably not good enough.

**

Gabe's favorite hookup is Mikey Way, because he's the exact right combination of cheerfully promiscuous and happy to take direction that means Gabe always gets exactly what she needs. If she says _don't touch me there_ or _do that, again, harder, and don't stop until I tell you to_ , Mikey will just do it, and not only does he never ask any questions, she can tell it's because he genuinely does not care. He likes sex. The self-identification crises of the person he's having that sex with are completely irrelevant to him.

One time he shoplifts purple nail polish and a stick of eyeliner for her, handing them over as nonchalantly as he does everything else. "These would look rad on you," he says. "I was going to get glitter, but I was out of room in my pockets."

"That's because your pants are too tight."

"You like 'em that way." 

She twists the eyeliner between her fingers and frowns at him. "What made you think I would want these?"

He shrugs. "They're totally punk rock. I'm gonna go get a drink." 

She ducks into the bathroom to put the eyeliner on, then writes "Fuck the rich" on her neck with it and throws it in the trash. Punk rock. Fuck yeah. 

**

Touring with Travie and Wentz is awesome, and she even likes the babies they've brought along on the tour, the Beckett kid and his band. She remembers meeting Bill after a few Midtown shows in Chicago, all attitude and eyes. And clear fucking tenor. Gabe doesn't believe in envy, but she might make an exception for Bill.

There's one night that gets weird, when they're all lying in the grass outside the Gym Class bus, looking up at the sky and not making Wentz talk about whatever's got him all quiet and hollow-eyed. Bill's telling one of his endless number of stories about being mistaken for a girl, and how hilarious and exasperating it is. Gabe rubs her thumb on the seam of her jeans and looks for falling stars.

"Well, if you want that to stop happening, baby boy," Travie says, and Gabe realizes she missed the whole shift in the tone of the conversation. "You've just gotta change your clothes and your hair. Give people what they expect to see, you know?"

"But I _like_ my clothes and my hair," Bill says, his voice hot with annoyance. "Why can't people just quit making assumptions?"

"That's not how the world works."

"It should be, though," Gabe says, keeping her eyes on the sky so she won't know if they look at her. "People should quit fucking assuming, or at least be open to being corrected. Why the fuck should everybody have to conform just to get through the day? That's bullshit."

"Yeah." Wentz hasn't said anything all night; the hoarse word makes Gabe jump. "Anybody should be able to do whatever the fuck they want without getting jumped on for it. Like, people should mind their own business and not be so goddamn judgy."

"And _nosy_ ," Bill huffs.

"All right, all right," Travie sighs. "Let's drop it and have some fun, okay? Find a party. Throw our own."

"I know the kind of thing you mean when you say party," Bill says, and he and Travie both start giggling in the dark. Gabe ignores them, turning her head to look at Wentz. He's looking back at her with an unreadable face, so carefully blank that it causes jitter in her stomach.

She needs to talk to Rob.

**

Rob sits patiently through her lecture on how it isn't okay to tell someone's personal business without permission, then cups Gabe's face in his hands and says, "Dude. Chill the fuck out."

"You told Pete about my shit."

"No, I didn't. I haven't told Pete anything about you. We have not discussed you at all."

"But--" Gabe stops. "But he."

"What did he say, exactly?"

"He didn't say anything. But he _looked_."

"Oh. Well. A look." Rob rolls his eyes. "Case closed, then, this freakout is totally justified."

"Shut up." Gabe rubs her face. "Shit."

"I never tell anybody your business. Mostly because I don't understand your business."

"You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that. You don't have to understand to believe. That's a fundamental fact of religion and capitalism."

"What?"

"Forget it." Rob pats her arm. "I believe you. You're a girl in boy's clothing."

Gabe shakes her head. "It's my clothing, so it's girl's clothing. Because I'm a girl."

"Have you ever _tried_ skirts, or anything?"

Gabe pulls away. "Why can't I be a tomboy? A kinda butch girl?"

"If you're going to do that, why not just be a dude?"

It fucking sucks when Rob reminds her that he's dumb. "Because I'm not."

He doesn't say anything for a few minutes, then asks if she wants to take the van to get Taco Bell. Which she does, so she lets him have his change of subject and they go.

She doesn't _avoid_ Wentz, exactly, but she cuts out of any conversation that starts to go in any kind of sensitive direction when he's around. And she does her best not to look him in the eye.

**

When Midtown breaks up, she decides to try passing.

She goes to Macy's, not thrift stores, because if she's going to do this she's going to make it an investment. A flouncy skirt, a red blouse, tights. No heels in her size, of course, but she finds a pair of loafers that look neutral. It's weird that the gender of her shoes is easier to figure out than her own. She buys a scarf and a bunch of fancy makeup. The clerks make jokes about shopping for her girlfriend and she stares at them blankly, not wanting to be part of the joke but not able to shut them down. 

She goes back to her apartment, puts it all on, and has the worst panic attack of her entire life.

She's never been all that dysphoric in her body, not really; she's just known who she is and regarded it as a kind of amusing fuckup, the same way it's hairy and all the accents she's gone through have been mockable and wrong. But this--this layer of performance, putting high-femininity on, it's like an ugly coat of paint that shows off every flaw. It's like a neon sign that says _liar_ , pointed right at her.

She changes into sweatpants and a t-shirt, tucking her dick back in her boxer-briefs so it's out of the way but doesn't hurt. Be yourself but keep your secrets in your heart. She really ought to have learned that lesson by now.

**

Signing with Decaydance means a meeting with Wentz. "You haven't gotten any taller," she says, sliding into the chair across from him. "Sorry to see that."

Wentz flips her off and sits down, looking around for the waitress. "And you're still a jerk."

"Guilty as charged." Gabe folds her hands on the table. "You're sure about this? It's not Midtown."

"I like it." He taps the menu against the edge of the table in a restless staccato. "I like your work."

"I want to sign with you. I don't care about the money. I care about a label that has my back."

"We're a gang." Wentz looks at her utterly seriously. "Come at one of us, you come at us all."

"I'll bring my brass knuckles." Gabe can't look away from him, can't stop zeroing in on little details that ping in her chest like someone striking a hammer against her ribs. The dry, blurred remnants of eyeliner at the edge of his lashes. The chipped polish at his nail beds. The way his hair falls over his forehead half-careless and half-planned. he knows better than to make assumptions, but it's nice to pretend.

"I got a switchblade in my pocket," Wentz says, just as the waitress comes over. Her eyes widen and Pete laughs, covering his mouth with his hand. "Not really."

Gabe wants to know the limits of the gang, and at what point Wentz cuts someone loose to fend for themselves in their weirdness, and...a lot of other things, but this isn't the time or place.

"Let's celebrate," Pete says. "Champagne?"

"I'm more of a vodka type."

Pete grins. "Me too. We should go out tonight and celebrate for real."

Getting fucked up with Pete Wentz. Gabe has heard worse ideas. "You're on."

Pete holds his hand out across the table. "To Cobra Starship."

It's weird how their fingers curl together like they fit. Gabe doesn't want to believe in that.

Pete keeps smiling at her as he settles back into his seat. "This is going to be awesome."

**

Beckett told her once that back in the day, Pete was considered the makeout king of Chicago. Gabe can't argue with that.

She's trained herself out of saying stuff flat-out and clear, the way she did with Mikey; everybody else she's been with got all weird about it, asking a lot of questions and trying to, like, make her share her feelings. She just goes with what happens and it's fine. Not perfect, but what is?

Pete, though. Pete seems to have some kind of sixth sense for when she's uncomfortable, or maybe he just pays attention to her body language, or something. His whole above-the-waist thing helps, too. He's aggressive in just the right way, taking control of kisses and grabbing her by the shoulders and groaning and growling against her mouth, but if she ever tenses or hesitates he'll easily veer off in another direction, and he never _says_ anything about it.

It's awesome, but it's also fucked up. She's lying to him, after all, and that didn't bug her very much with anybody else but it does now. Some switch got flipped in her head, she doesn't know when or why, but she wants to be honest with this fucking guy who lies there with his head on her chest and tells her all his secrets.

She hasn't told anybody since she was nineteen. She doesn't even know how she _would_ at this point. And if Pete freaked out, she will have to change her name and go to Uruguay. Or, like, Greenland. Somewhere she can disappear.

"Hey," Pete says, biting the curve of her jaw. "Hey. You're a million miles away, dude, what's up?"

"Nothing." She runs her hand up and down his spine, feeling how he arches up into the touch like a cat. "I'm just happy, that's all."

He stops and looks at her for a minute. "Happy looks a lot like sad, huh?"

She takes a slow breath and forces a smile. "You should use that in a song."

"It's a little on-the-nose for me." He makes a face. "You want to play video games?"

It's a cheap out, but it's an out. "Yeah. Absolutely."

**

Not telling her band is weird in a different way. They don't need to know; it doesn't change anything; but holding part of herself back from them feels strange. It's not a heart-and-soul project like Midtown, so it's not too much for her to deal with, but... still. She's deliberately building walls, and it's _strange_.

One thing she loves, though, unabashedly loves--when she looks out into the crowd, she sees a wall of kids wearing the same thing she is. Tight jeans, bright t-shirts, badass shoes, sunglasses. The gender-neutral uniform of today's scene.

Whatever emo and pop-punk and _Pete_ have to answer for, she'll never have any beef with that, and how it feels to fit right in.

**

Touring with Pete again is good. Really good. His band is falling apart and he's cracking around the edges; she's drinking too much and taking pills by the handful and sometimes she feels like if she doesn't tell someone the truth soon she's going to lose her breath forever.

They can be as sad and fucked-up as they want to be, together. That's the part that's good.

"Being a dad is weird," Pete says, sleepy-slow. "Like, I actually have to get my shit together. It is no longer optional."

"He'll love you even if you're fucked up." Gabe traces her fingers over Pete's stomach, inventing patterns in the skin. That's as much as they can touch, now--he's married and she and Bianca are whatever they are. Giving things another try. Trying is one of the things that closes up Gabe's throat. One of these days B's going to want to get married, and Gabe's going to ask her, and if there's still a lie between them it's going to fester and ache and bleed and--

She chokes on her own breath and puts her head down on Pete's thigh.

"I don't want to fail him," Pete says. His fingers tense against her arm. "Dude, are you okay?"

"I think my heart is going to explode."

"You need Xanax." Pete grabs a pill bottle from nowhere and shakes a few into her palm. "We already killed the vodka. You'll have to use water. Gross, right?"

"Mad gross." Gabe sits up long enough to wash the pills down, then curls up against Pete's side. "Do you think that if you lie enough, your lies take corporeal form and smother you?"

"Um. I never thought of that before, but now I'll have nightmares about it."

"Sorry. Never mind."

Pete pets her hair clumsily. "Tell me your thought, Gabey. Give me your secrets."

"I can't."

"Why not? It's just us. This bunk is our confessional."

"I don't do confession, dude. Not my thing at all."

"It's a metaphor." Pete tugs her hair gently. "Talk to me."

Gabe inhales and exhales, trying to find some kind of center to the whirling in her head. "Pete, I..."

"C'mon, dude. Let it out."

"I'm a girl," she whispers. "Inside. My heart, my head. I'm a girl."

His hand tills on her hair and she waits for him to pull it away. 

"So I should call you Gabriela?"

She blinks and looks up, squinting through tears she didn't give permission to form. "What?"

"Gabriela. Gabi. Or something else?"

"No." She swallows and sits up, hugging her knees to her chest. "I'm still Gabe. I've always been Gabe. Just."

"When did you figure this out?" he asks carefully. "Just now? On tour?"

She shakes her head, wiping her eyes on her jeans. The seam catches at the corner of her eyelid and she focuses in on the pain. "Since I was, like, a kid. Since before my mom left. That's, like. That's why she left, I guess, or whatever. She thought it was fucked up and Papi thought they should let me do what I wanted and it was the last straw."

"Wow." Pete leans back against the wall. "That's more than I've learned about you in five years, all at once."

"Yeah, well." She can't believe they drank all the vodka. "Let's throw a party."

"A coming out party?"

"No!" She smacks the mattress between them with the flat of her hand. "You can't tell anybody. Nobody. Not Travie, not Patrick, not Ryland, not Ashlee. Nobody." He stares at her all wide-eyed and she has to crack a joke or she's going to scream. He's as wide-eyed as when she looked at him across that table and said she was signing with him, except there's no eyeliner now, and no mysteries. Just Pete. "You can tell Bronx, but only because he doesn't use language yet."

"Why can't I tell anybody?"

"Because nobody will believe you." She shrugs at him. "Nobody ever believes it."

"I believe it."

Her eye is watering harder than ever. "Fine. You, my dad, and Rob. That's it. That's everybody who's ever believed me."

"That sucks." He bites his thumbnail and stares at her for a minute. "You want to watch a rom-com and talk about boys?"

"No. Asshole." She's smiling, though. Pete. 

"You want to watch a rom-com and talk about _girls_?"

"Can we just stay here and I'll make you listen to Bikini Kill and you can tell me about how you lost your virginity?"

"That's a shitty story that also nobody believes." He scoots over and grabs her iPod and his big headphones. "I'll tell you the better version where I lost it to Patrick."

She lies down next to him and scrolls through her music. "When the tour's over, we're going to pretend none of this ever happened, right?" He doesn't answer right away, and she looks up, searching for his eyes in the dim light. "Pete? Right?"

"Yeah," he says, and takes her hand in the space between their bodies. "Everything was a myth. But not a lie."

**

She stalls for another six months before she tells Bianca. It ends up happening at Shabbat dinner at her father's house, when she drinks too much wine after pre-gaming in the city. Pre-gaming Shabbat dinner is neither holy nor healthy, but she's had a bad day.

It gets worse when she comes out to her girlfriend in her dad's living room while sobbing and choking on bile mixed with red wine. It definitely becomes the ultimate prize-winning worst day ever when B says, "I know that was hard to say, and I know I'm the bad guy right now, but... that's not what I signed on for, Gabe, and I can't do it."

Papi drives her back to the train station. Gabe has another glass of wine and falls asleep on the kitchen floor.

The next morning her father is waiting, his face stern. "Don't, please," she says, rubbing her eyes. "I know."

"Querida, you cannot go on like this."

"I just got dumped last night. I can go on like this for a while."

"You know very well what I mean. The drinking. The other things. You must stop."

"I can't."

"Why? Tell me."

She presses her thumbs against her eyes, willing the pain to ease or turn into something she can use to justify what she's probably going to do later. "It hurts too much."

"What does?"

"Existing." Her vision is full of sparks and false light. She lets her hands fall away. "Being me."

"You must allow someone to care for you until you feel stronger."

"Nobody wants to do that."

"I do."

She shakes her head. "I can't let you."

He sighs and runs his hand over his hair. "Your friends? Your band mates?"

"I can't put this on them. They wouldn't understand."

"The one you brought here when he was in pain. The short one with many tattoos."

She manages a smile. "I can hear your disapproval, Papi."

"Not the point at this time. He told me that he will always be there for you, as you are there for him."

Gabe blinks at the floor. "He told you that?"

"He did."

"I wonder if he meant it."

"Does he have a habit of lying?"

She laughs and covers her eyes again. "Yes, but not the way you mean."

"I don't understand."

"It doesn't matter." She takes a breath and nods. "I'll call him."

**

Living in Pete's guest room is like staying at a strange hotel where the staff works on its own very definitive timeframe, the owner wanders around in his underwear, and wakeup service is provided by a wailing baby every day.

Gabe likes to lie in bed and listen to them move around the house. Pete's footsteps, Ashlee's voice, and the matched set of Bronx's wails and the nanny's efforts to soothe him. It's a house where a family lives. Gabe loves that, as the same time that she's so jealous she could scream.

She has rules. She made them up herself, Pete never said a word about it. She keeps her drinking in her room, and anything harder for outside the house. She can get as fucked up as she wants (and she wants to get very fucked up, all the time, because this world is nothing but lie and aches and faking joy until she cracks inside like ice), but not in a way where she might hurt Bronx.

Kids deserve better. That's the rule.

Pete's patient with her, so patient that she wants to puke. Pete deserves better, too. Better than a fucked-up mess of a friend who's wrong inside. Better than trying to find a new fit in the music industry when Gabe could tell him that it's all always going to be a lie. Better than fighting with his wife about his friend staying in their house pushing in like part of the family. As if that could ever happen.

"How long is he going to stay?" Ashlee asks one night. Gabe can hear her from the hallway. "He can't stay forever, Pete."

"My friends are welcome here as long as they need."

"That isn't fair."

"What isn't fair about it?"

And on and on, probably; Gabe walks back to her room instead of listening for any more.

"Why haven't you told her?" she asks Pete the next night, when they both sit out on the deck, feet dangling in the pool and heads tilted back to study the light-haze that blocks the stars.

"Told her what?" Pete kicks his feet in a slow arc.

"That I'm a girl."

Pete glances at her, eyes dark. "You want me to tell her?"

"I don't know. I want to know why you haven't."

Pete shrugs. "I don't want to go around telling your business, dude."

"You're a good friend." Gabe bumps her knee against his. She already knows she'll be leaving in the morning.

**

At the end of the summer, when she goes to Brazil to give sobriety a try, she sends Pete a text before boarding the plane. _Maybe when I come back everything will be different._

It isn't, but she feels more like she can live with it.

**

The divorce hits Pete hard, knocks him down and sideways and breaks all of the fragile things he had made himself believe.

Gabe takes him to Japan in the absence of any other ideas. It was what he would do for her, probably. Except maybe not Japan. Maybe his back deck in the dull LA light. Maybe Costa Rica. Maybe Spain. But Japan wasn't an option before, and now it is, so--

So.

Gabe's mind runs in frantic circles when she's trying not to let herself think. 

"You want to have sex?" Pete asks, lying spread-eagled on the bed in their Tokyo hotel room. He's been staring sullenly at the wall for an hour. Gabe's relieved that he's talking, kind of confused by the topic. She needs a drink.

"Not really."

"I'd probably be bad at it, I guess."

"I'm sure you wouldn't."

"I've got all kinds of sex issues. Book and books of sex issues. I could sell it as a series and make millions of dollars."

"You have millions of dollars."

That makes him laugh, a little bit. Gabe pokes at her suitcase and closes it, unable to find the will to put her clothes away. That's a sign of being beyond fucking tired, for her. Beyond everything.

"Why did you tell me?" 

Gabe looks up. "What?"

"Why did you tell me about you, when you didn't tell anyone else?"

Gabe casts around helplessly for a moment. "I trusted you," she says finally. "I trust you. Always."

"But _why_? I'm just a fuckup."

"So am I." Gabe shrugs. "You ever heard the idea of kindred spirits?"

Pete's brow furrows. "Like soulmates?"

"Yeah." She shrugs again and pulls her knees to her chest, looking up at him from the floor. "Kind of like that. We get each other. Don't we?"

Pete watches her for a minute and then holds out his hand, letting it fall over the edge of the bed. "We're a pair."

Gabe shifts closer, taking his hand and squeezing it tight. "We are. The boy all the girls want to dance with and--"

"That's not the words." Pete almost smiles. "The saddest boy in the world and the most beautiful girl."

"I call bullshit on both of those."

"What about in this room?" Pete tugs at her hand and she moves closer, resting her head on the edge of the mattress, close enough to his that they can breathe together. "Does that sound okay?"

"We can just be us," she says. "Right? We can always just be us."

"Always." He squeezes her hand and she feels him kiss her hair. "Always gonna be real when it's you and me."

That feels like it might be good enough. It really does.

**Author's Note:**

> _Bikini Kill - The CD Version of the First Two LPs_
> 
> _My first punk rock record. Weird, huh? I then realized I couldn’t exactly be a riot-grrl because I wasn’t exactly a girl._
> 
> (Gabe Saporta, on Midtown's website, 2003)


End file.
